Les Filles du service secret

Raymond Greenleaf is the governor of a generic state. He wants to run for senator, but he has a secret. He's an escaped criminal, and a campaign of that order will reveal it. So machine fixer Raymond Burr applies pressure and gets a girl in the FBI's fingerprint file to remove his card. Burr arranges for everyone else down the line to wind up dead.

The FBI won't stand for its own personnel being killed. They get a line on the original name on the file and assign agents Cesar Romero and George Brent to the case.

There are some fine actors in this, including Audrey Totter in a good-girl role (alas, she's far more interesting in her evil roles in noirs). Other well-known players include Joi Lansing, Byron Foulger, Marie Blake (grandma in THE ADDAMS FAMILY) and O. Z. Whitehead. Under-rated B cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh gets a fine night-time river pursuit, and William Berke directs the film with a nice arc of excitement.

The Lippert organization was not known for producing great movies. They had a chain of theaters, and with the slowdown in post-war B production, they used their connections to set up a releasing organization, including some Korda films, and began their own production with talent fallen on hard times. Although none of their approximately 150 movies, most produced between 1948 and the mid-1950s, can be considered great films, they showcased interesting talent. This is one of their best.

A Kefauver type racketeering Senate investigating committee is taking itself on the road for local hearings and that is of great concern to Governor Raymond Greenleaf. It seems as though way back in his youth and under a different name he committed a murder and if the committee uncovers any wrong doing he could be charged with its more than a stretch in Club Fed. That's because when he would be arrested and printed his prints would be on file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Of course the state racketeering boss Raymond Burr has a lot invested in Greenleaf and he's not about to see his investment get flushed down the toilet. He hatches a scheme to get the fingerprint card out of J. Edgar Hoover's closely guarded files. It involves getting to one of the clerks in the Justice Department, Margia Dean through her brother, Don Garner. And when that doesn't work Burr tries to use another clerk Audrey Totter who is our FBI Girl.

I have to say that with that title alone I was expecting some paranoid Cold War story. So I was pleasantly surprised when FBI Girl turned out to be a nice noir thriller. It came from the Poverty Row studio of Lippert Productions, but not bad considering the source.

Caesar Romero and George Brent play the two agents on this case and Romero provides the narration for the film. The two agents are all business and the plot follows a straight line narrative to the source of their problems. Greenleaf may have been governor, but Burr is calling all the shots and his rackets have a big investment in keeping their see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil governor in office. And he's being talked about for even higher office. And as the state boss Burr outshines everyone in the cast.

Try to catch this one when broadcast and don't be put off by the title, it's better than you think.

Could this be it? The Holy Grail, the zenith of film noir mediocrity, the quintessential 'B' movie? F. B. I. Girl is no ordinary quickie/cheapie, but comes packed with a gallimaufry of bonus features: Stilted, wooden acting, unintentionally amusing dialogue, two investigators (Romero and Brent) who are about as charismatic as a wet week-end in Widnes and a thoroughly muddled plot, involving the stealing of incriminating fingerprint records.

Ambitious, but corrupt governor, Raymond Greenleaf, in collusion with his ruthless P. R. man, Raymond Burr, decide that the best way to beat a murder rap is....er... to commit more murders. Burr, a character who exudes all the charm of a fox ravaged bin bag, orchestrates the proceedings. His first patsy is Margia Dean. She may hold a responsible position with the F. B. I., but will she be prepared to FIB?

The growing body count produces a priceless sequence. Disguised as a priest, gravel voiced hood, Alexander Pope gains easy access to the merely critically wounded, hospitalized Don Garner, hoping to add a few finishing touches to the job, but events take a wildly unexpected turn, with uproarious results.

Despite having little going for it, F. B. I. Girl works surprisingly well on another level. It never descends to the depths of the gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly abysmal. Moreover, from its mock military opening score the movie continues along a consistently entertaining, ham-fisted plateau, even raising the temperature by a few degrees for the relatively tense, fast moving finale. All involved appear to be tinkering with the dynamics, the nuts and bolts of the genre, creating, whether by design or not, a finished work, which conveys an air of affectionate parody. Taken in this context, F. B. I. Girl ticks all the boxes and emerges as a must-see vehicle.

This all but lost docu-noir was released By Poverty Row Lippert Productions, shot in just twelve days and directed by William Berke.... This gets better and better! Watch at your earliest opportunity and neatly avert years of regret.

CODA: Startling stat. In 1951 six million Americans had police records. There must be a message (in a bottle) for all of us.

As usual for director William Berke, who had been producing and/or directing low-budget crime, action, and western films since the mid-30s, FBI Girl creates a nice hard-boiled feel, moves quickly, and still plays well today. It's the story of a crooked governor who tries, with the help of his evil henchman Raymond Burr (always convincing as a sadistic heavy!), to cover his criminal activities decades before by having a set of fingerprints stolen from FBI headquarters, fingerprints that would establish his true identity. Ace FBI agent Cesar Romero (who also intrudes once or twice with narration) discovers a few details that don't add up in a seemingly unrelated case, and the plot takes off from there. The strong cast--Burr, Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, Tom Drake-- helps a lot, and overall it's a solid "B"-programmer from the underrated Lippert Pictures. There's also a strange sequence where some of the characters are watching the comedy team of Tommy Noonan (of Promises, Promises fame) and Peter Marshall (of Hollywood Squares fame) perform on television! That's a novel way of working them into the film (usually there would be a scene where the characters go to a nightclub; however, this was no doubt cheaper to film than a nightclub scene). Recommended for fans of post-war crime films and early Television police shows. By the way, the scene depicted on the movie poster-- of Audrey Totter standing seductively wearing a form-fitting outfit with a slit up the side and holding a gun--appears nowhere in the film (she's not an agent, but a clerk, and certainly would not be holding a gun!), but it looks great!

Among my William Berke's favourites with BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST, the most interesting crime films he ever made, with a good plot, a good cast and a good surprise because there are no real lead character here, no one and unique hero above the rest of the cast. It is not too long and it is tense all long the movie. Produced by Lippert Company, it is at the same quality scale as a RKO picture, a company for which William Berke also worked. The cops duo, some kind of a buddy scheme - Cesar Romero, George Brent - is a bit improbable but surprising in the good way. You can trust me, this film is not a masterpiece but a damn good B movie.